Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the early 1950s, and developed into a range of different styles in the 1960s and later, particularly in the United Kingdom and in the United States.[1][2] It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style which drew heavily on the African-American genres of blues and rhythm and blues, and from country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical styles. Musically, rock has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass, drums, and one or more singers. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political.

Rock music has also embodied and served as the vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major subcultures including mods and rockers in the UK and the hippie counterculture that spread out from San Francisco in the US in the 1960s. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the goth, punk, and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of the protest song, rock music has been associated with political activism as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity.

Rock music is traditionally built on a foundation of simple unsyncopated rhythms in a 4/4 meter, with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four.[10] Melodies often originate from older musical modes such as the Dorian and Mixolydian, as well as major and minor modes. Harmonies range from the common triad to parallel perfect fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions.[10] Since the late 1950s[11] and particularly from the mid 1960s onwards, rock music often used the verse-chorus structure derived from blues and folk music, but there has been considerable variation from this model.[12] Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock.[13] Because of its complex history and its tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to a rigidly delineated musical definition."[14]

Unlike many earlier styles of popular music, rock lyrics have dealt with a wide range of themes, including romantic love, sex, rebellion against "The Establishment", social concerns, and life styles.[10] These themes were inherited from a variety of sources such as the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music, and rhythm and blues.[15] Music journalist Robert Christgau characterizes rock lyrics as a "cool medium" with simple diction and repeated refrains, and asserts that rock's primary "function" "pertains to music, or, more generally, noise."[16] The predominance of white, male, and often middle class musicians in rock music has often been noted,[17] and rock has been seen as an appropriation of black musical forms for a young, white and largely male audience.[18] As a result, it has also been seen to articulate the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics.[19] Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, "rock and roll usually implies an identification of male sexuality and aggression".[20]

Since the term “rock” started being used in preference to “rock and roll” from the late-1960s, it has usually been contrasted with pop music, with which it has shared many characteristics, but from which it is often distanced by an emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and a focus on serious and progressive themes as part of an ideology of authenticity that is frequently combined with an awareness of the genre's history and development.[21] According to Simon Frith, rock was “something more than pop, something more than rock and roll” and “[r]ock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with the romantic concept of art as artistic expression, original and sincere".[21] In the new millennium, the term rock has occasionally been used as a blanket term including forms like pop music, reggae music, soul music, and even hip hop, which it has been influenced with but often contrasted through much of its history.[22]

The foundations of rock music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music, with country and western.[23] In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music (then termed "race music") for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music.[24]

Rock and roll has been seen as leading to a number of distinct subgenres, including rockabilly, combining rock and roll with "hillbilly" country music, which was usually played and recorded in the mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley.[32] In contrast doo wop placed an emphasis on multi-part vocal harmonies and meaningless backing lyrics (from which the genre later gained its name), which were usually supported with light instrumentation and had its origins in 1930s and 1940s African American vocal groups.[33] Acts like the Crows, the Penguins, the El Dorados and the Turbans all scored major hits, and groups like the Platters, with songs including "The Great Pretender" (1955),[34] and the Coasters with humorous songs like "Yakety Yak" (1958),[35] ranked among the most successful rock and roll acts of the period.[36]

Commentators have traditionally perceived a decline of rock and roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By 1959, the death of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash, the departure of Elvis for the army, the retirement of Little Richard to become a preacher, prosecutions of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry and the breaking of the payola scandal (which implicated major figures, including Alan Freed, in bribery and corruption in promoting individual acts or songs), gave a sense that the rock and roll era established at that point had come to an end.[44]

The term pop has been used since the early 20th century to refer to popular music in general, but from the mid-1950s it began to be used for a distinct genre, aimed at a youth market, often characterized as a softer alternative to rock and roll.[45][46] From about 1967, it was increasingly used in opposition to the term rock music, to describe a form that was more commercial, ephemeral and accessible.[21] In contrast rock music was seen as focusing on extended works, particularly albums, was often associated with particular sub-cultures (like the counterculture of the 1960s), placed an emphasis on artistic values and "authenticity", stressed live performance and instrumental or vocal virtuosity and was often seen as encapsulating progressive developments rather than simply reflecting existing trends.[21][45][46][47] Nevertheless, much pop and rock music has been very similar in sound, instrumentation and even lyrical content.[nb 1]

The period of the later 1950s and early 1960s has traditionally been seen as an era of hiatus for rock and roll.[51] More recently some authors[weasel words] have emphasised important innovations and trends in this period without which future developments would not have been possible.[52][53] While early rock and roll, particularly through the advent of rockabilly, saw the greatest commercial success for male and white performers, in this era the genre was dominated by black and female artists. Rock and roll had not disappeared at the end of the 1950s and some of its energy can be seen in the Twist dance craze of the early 1960s, mainly benefiting the career of Chubby Checker.[53][nb 2]

Cliff Richard had the first British rock and roll hit with "Move It", effectively ushering in the sound of British rock.[56] At the start of the 1960s, his backing group the Shadows was the most successful group recording instrumentals.[57] While rock 'n' roll was fading into lightweight pop and ballads, British rock groups at clubs and local dances, heavily influenced by blues-rock pioneers like Alexis Korner, were starting to play with an intensity and drive seldom found in white American acts.[58]

Also significant was the advent of soul music as a major commercial force. Developing out of rhythm and blues with a re-injection of gospel music and pop, led by pioneers like Ray Charles and Sam Cooke from the mid-1950s,[59] by the early 1960s figures like Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder were dominating the R&B charts and breaking through into the main pop charts, helping to accelerate their desegregation, while Motown and Stax/Volt Records were becoming major forces in the record industry.[60][nb 3] Some historians of music[weasel words] have also pointed to important and innovative technical developments that built on rock and roll in this period, including the electronic treatment of sound by such innovators as Joe Meek, and the elaborate production methods of the Wall of Sound pursued by Phil Spector.[53]

Surf music achieved its greatest commercial success as vocal music, particularly the work of the Beach Boys, formed in 1961 in Southern California. Their early albums included both instrumental surf rock (among them covers of music by Dick Dale) and vocal songs, drawing on rock and roll and doo wop and the close harmonies of vocal pop acts like the Four Freshmen.[citation needed] Their first chart hit, "Surfin'" in 1962 reached the Billboard top 100 and helped make the surf music craze a national phenomenon.[64] The surf music craze and the careers of almost all surf acts was effectively ended by the arrival of the British Invasion from 1964.[citation needed][nb 4]

By the end of 1962, what would become the British rock scene had started with beat groups like The Beatles, Gerry & the Pacemakers and the Searchers from Liverpool and Freddie and the Dreamers, Herman's Hermits and the Hollies from Manchester. They drew on a wide range of American influences including soul, rhythm and blues and surf music,[65] initially reinterpreting standard American tunes and playing for dancers. Bands like the Animals from Newcastle and Them from Belfast,[66] and particularly those from London like the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds, were much more directly influenced by rhythm and blues and later blues music.[67] Soon these groups were composing their own material, combining US forms of music and infusing it with a high energy beat. Beat bands tended towards "bouncy, irresistible melodies", while early British blues acts tended towards less sexually innocent, more aggressive songs, often adopting an anti-establishment stance. There was, however, particularly in the early stages, considerable musical crossover between the two tendencies.[68] By 1963, led by the Beatles, beat groups had begun to achieve national success in Britain, soon to be followed into the charts by the more rhythm and blues focused acts.[69]

The British Invasion helped internationalize the production of rock and roll, opening the door for subsequent British (and Irish) performers to achieve international success.[78] In America it arguably spelled the end of instrumental surf music, vocal girl groups and (for a time) the teen idols, that had dominated the American charts in the late 1950s and 1960s.[79] It dented the careers of established R&B acts like Fats Domino and Chubby Checker and even temporarily derailed the chart success of surviving rock and roll acts, including Elvis.[80] The British Invasion also played a major part in the rise of a distinct genre of rock music, and cemented the primacy of the rock group, based on guitars and drums and producing their own material as singer-songwriters.[33]

Garage rock was a raw form of rock music, particularly prevalent in North America in the mid-1960s and so called because of the perception that it was rehearsed in the suburban family garage.[81][82] Garage rock songs often revolved around the traumas of high school life, with songs about "lying girls" being particularly common.[83] The lyrics and delivery tended to be more aggressive than was common at the time, often with growled or shouted vocals that dissolved into incoherent screaming.[81] They ranged from crude one-chord music (like the Seeds) to near-studio musician quality (including the Knickerbockers, the Remains, and the Fifth Estate). There were also regional variations in many parts of the country with flourishing scenes particularly in California and Texas.[83] The Pacific Northwest states of Washington and Oregon had perhaps[according to whom?] the most defined regional sound.[84]

The British Invasion greatly influenced garage bands, providing them with a national audience, leading many (often surf or hot rod groups) to adopt a British influence, and encouraging many more groups to form.[83] Thousands of garage bands were extant in the US and Canada during the era and hundreds produced regional hits.[83] Despite scores of bands being signed to major or large regional labels, most were commercial failures. It is generally agreed that garage rock peaked both commercially and artistically around 1966.[83] By 1968 the style largely disappeared from the national charts and at the local level as amateur musicians faced college, work or the draft.[83] New styles had evolved to replace garage rock.[83][nb 5]

Although the first impact of the British Invasion on American popular music was through beat and R&B based acts, the impetus was soon taken up by a second wave of bands that drew their inspiration more directly from American blues, including the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds.[91] British blues musicians of the late 1950s and early 1960s had been inspired by the acoustic playing of figures such as Lead Belly, who was a major influence on the Skiffle craze, and Robert Johnson.[92] Increasingly they adopted a loud amplified sound, often centered on the electric guitar, based on the Chicago blues, particularly after the tour of Britain by Muddy Waters in 1958, which prompted Cyril Davies and guitarist Alexis Korner to form the band Blues Incorporated.[93] The band involved and inspired many of the figures of the subsequent British blues boom, including members of the Rolling Stones and Cream, combining blues standards and forms with rock instrumentation and emphasis.[58]

The other key focus for British blues was John Mayall; his band, the Bluesbreakers, included Eric Clapton (after his departure from the Yardbirds) and later Peter Green. Particularly significant was the release of Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (Beano) album (1966), considered one of the seminal British blues recordings and the sound of which was much emulated in both Britain and the United States.[94] Eric Clapton went on to form supergroups Cream, Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominos, followed by an extensive solo career that helped bring blues rock into the mainstream.[93] Green, along with the Bluesbreaker's rhythm section Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, formed Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, who enjoyed some of the greatest commercial success in the genre.[93] In the late 1960s Jeff Beck, also an alumnus of the Yardbirds, moved blues rock in the direction of heavy rock with his band, the Jeff Beck Group.[93] The last Yardbirds guitarist was Jimmy Page, who went on to form The New Yardbirds which rapidly became Led Zeppelin. Many of the songs on their first three albums, and occasionally later in their careers, were expansions on traditional blues songs.[93]

Early blues rock bands often emulated jazz, playing long, involved improvisations, which would later be a major element of progressive rock. From about 1967 bands like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience had moved away from purely blues-based music into psychedelia.[97] By the 1970s, blues rock had become heavier and more riff-based, exemplified by the work of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, and the lines between blues rock and hard rock "were barely visible",[97] as bands began recording rock-style albums.[97] The genre was continued in the 1970s by figures such as George Thorogood and Pat Travers,[93] but, particularly on the British scene (except perhaps for the advent of groups such as Status Quo and Foghat who moved towards a form of high energy and repetitive boogie rock), bands became focused on heavy metal innovation, and blues rock began to slip out of the mainstream.[98]

By the 1960s, the scene that had developed out of the American folk music revival had grown to a major movement, utilising traditional music and new compositions in a traditional style, usually on acoustic instruments.[99] In America the genre was pioneered by figures such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and often identified with progressive or labor politics.[99] In the early sixties figures such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan had come to the fore in this movement as singer-songwriters.[100] Dylan had begun to reach a mainstream audience with hits including "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and "Masters of War" (1963), which brought "protest songs" to a wider public,[101] but, although beginning to influence each other, rock and folk music had remained largely separate genres, often with mutually exclusive audiences.[102]

Early attempts to combine elements of folk and rock included the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" (1964), which was the first commercially successful folk song to be recorded with rock and roll instrumentation[103] and the Beatles "I'm a Loser" (1964), arguably the first Beatles song to be influenced directly by Dylan.[104] The folk rock movement is usually thought to have taken off with The Byrds' recording of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" which topped the charts in 1965.[102] With members who had been part of the cafe-based folk scene in Los Angeles, the Byrds adopted rock instrumentation, including drums and 12-string Rickenbacker guitars, which became a major element in the sound of the genre.[102] Later that year Dylan adopted electric instruments, much to the outrage of many folk purists, with his "Like a Rolling Stone" becoming a US hit single.[102] Folk rock particularly took off in California, where it led acts like the Mamas & the Papas and Crosby, Stills and Nash to move to electric instrumentation, and in New York, where it spawned performers including The Lovin' Spoonful and Simon and Garfunkel, with the latter's acoustic "The Sounds of Silence" (1965) being remixed with rock instruments to be the first of many hits.[102]

These acts directly influenced British performers like Donovan and Fairport Convention.[102] In 1969 Fairport Convention abandoned their mixture of American covers and Dylan-influenced songs to play traditional English folk music on electric instruments.[105] This British folk rock was taken up by bands including Pentangle, Steeleye Span and the Albion Band, which in turn prompted Irish groups like Horslips and Scottish acts like the JSD Band, Spencer's Feat and later Five Hand Reel, to use their traditional music to create a brand of Celtic rock in the early 1970s.[106]

Folk rock reached its peak of commercial popularity in the period 1967–68, before many acts moved off in a variety of directions, including Dylan and the Byrds, who began to develop country rock.[107] However, the hybridization of folk and rock has been seen as having a major influence on the development of rock music, bringing in elements of psychedelia, and helping to develop the ideas of the singer-songwriter, the protest song and concepts of "authenticity".[102][108]

Progressive rock, a term sometimes used interchangeably with art rock, moved beyond established musical formulas by experimenting with different instruments, song types, and forms.[113] From the mid-1960s the Left Banke, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys, had pioneered the inclusion of harpsichords, wind, and string sections on their recordings to produce a form of Baroque rock and can be heard in singles like Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" (1967), with its Bach-inspired introduction.[114]The Moody Blues used a full orchestra on their album Days of Future Passed (1967) and subsequently created orchestral sounds with synthesizers.[113] Classical orchestration, keyboards, and synthesizers were a frequent addition to the established rock format of guitars, bass, and drums in subsequent progressive rock.[115]

Greater commercial success was enjoyed by Pink Floyd, who also moved away from psychedelia after the departure of Syd Barrett in 1968, with The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), seen as a masterpiece of the genre, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time.[119] There was an emphasis on instrumental virtuosity, with Yes showcasing the skills of both guitarist Steve Howe and keyboard player Rick Wakeman, while Emerson, Lake & Palmer were a supergroup who produced some of the genre's most technically demanding work.[113]Jethro Tull and Genesis both pursued very different, but distinctly English, brands of music.[120]Renaissance, formed in 1969 by ex-Yardbirds Jim McCarty and Keith Relf, evolved into a high-concept band featuring the three-octave voice of Annie Haslam.[121] Most British bands depended on a relatively small cult following, but a handful, including Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Jethro Tull, managed to produce top ten singles at home and break the American market.[122] The American brand of progressive rock varied from the eclectic and innovative Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and Blood, Sweat & Tears,[123] to more pop rock orientated bands like Boston, Foreigner, Kansas, Journey, and Styx.[113] These, beside British bands Supertramp and ELO, all demonstrated a prog rock influence and while ranking among the most commercially successful acts of the 1970s, heralding the era of pomp or arena rock, which would last until the costs of complex shows (often with theatrical staging and special effects), would be replaced by more economical rock festivals as major live venues in the 1990s.[citation needed]

The instrumental strand of the genre resulted in albums like Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells (1973), the first record, and worldwide hit, for the Virgin Records label, which became a mainstay of the genre.[113] Instrumental rock was particularly significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Can, and Faust to circumvent the language barrier.[124] Their synthesiser-heavy "krautrock", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music), would be a major influence on subsequent electronic rock.[113] With the advent of punk rock and technological changes in the late 1970s, progressive rock was increasingly dismissed as pretentious and overblown.[125][126] Many bands broke up, but some, including Genesis, ELP, Yes, and Pink Floyd, regularly scored top ten albums with successful accompanying worldwide tours.[90] Some bands which emerged in the aftermath of punk, such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Ultravox, and Simple Minds, showed the influence of progressive rock, as well as their more usually recognized punk influences.[127]

In the late 1960s jazz rock emerged as a distinct subgenre out of the blues rock, psychedelic and progressive rock scenes, mixing the power of rock with the musical complexity and improvisational elements of jazz. AllMusic states that the term jazz-rock "may refer to the loudest, wildest, most electrified fusion bands from the jazz camp, but most often it describes performers coming from the rock side of the equation." Jazz rock "...generally grew out of the most artistically ambitious rock subgenres of the late '60s and early '70s", including the singer-songwriter movement.[128] Many early US rock and roll musicians had begun in jazz and carried some of these elements into the new music. In Britain the subgenre of blues rock, and many of its leading figures, like Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce of the Eric Clapton-fronted band Cream, had emerged from the British jazz scene. Often highlighted as the first true jazz-rock recording is the only album by the relatively obscure New York-based the Free Spirits with Out of Sight and Sound (1966). The first group of bands to self-consciously use the label were R&B oriented white rock bands that made use of jazzy horn sections, like Electric Flag, Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago, to become some of the most commercially successful acts of the later 1960s and early 1970s.[129]

British acts to emerge in the same period from the blues scene, to make use of the tonal and improvisational aspects of jazz, included Nucleus[130] and the Graham Bond and John Mayall spin-off Colosseum. From the psychedelic rock and the Canterbury scenes came Soft Machine, who, it has been suggested, produced one of the artistically successfully fusions of the two genres. Perhaps the most critically acclaimed fusion came from the jazz side of the equation, with Miles Davis, particularly influenced by the work of Hendrix, incorporating rock instrumentation into his sound for the album Bitches Brew (1970). It was a major influence on subsequent rock-influenced jazz artists, including Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Weather Report.[129] The genre began to fade in the late 1970s, as a mellower form of fusion began to take its audience,[128] but acts like Steely Dan,[128] Frank Zappa and Joni Mitchell recorded significant jazz-influenced albums in this period, and it has continued to be a major influence on rock music.[129]

Roots rock is the term now used to describe a move away from what some saw as the excesses of the psychedelic scene, to a more basic form of rock and roll that incorporated its original influences, particularly country and folk music, leading to the creation of country rock and Southern rock.[131] In 1966 Bob Dylan went to Nashville to record the album Blonde on Blonde.[132] This, and subsequent more clearly country-influenced albums, have been seen as creating the genre of country folk, a route pursued by a number of largely acoustic folk musicians.[132] Other acts that followed the back-to-basics trend were the Canadian group the Band and the California-based Creedence Clearwater Revival, both of which mixed basic rock and roll with folk, country and blues, to be among the most successful and influential bands of the late 1960s.[133] The same movement saw the beginning of the recording careers of Californian solo artists like Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George,[134] and influenced the work of established performers such as the Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet (1968) and the Beatles' Let It Be (1970).[110]

The founders of Southern rock are usually thought to be the Allman Brothers Band, who developed a distinctive sound, largely derived from blues rock, but incorporating elements of boogie, soul, and country in the early 1970s.[96] The most successful act to follow them were Lynyrd Skynyrd, who helped establish the "Good ol' boy" image of the subgenre and the general shape of 1970s' guitar rock.[96] Their successors included the fusion/progressive instrumentalists Dixie Dregs, the more country-influenced Outlaws, jazz-leaning Wet Willie and (incorporating elements of R&B and gospel) the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.[96] After the loss of original members of the Allmans and Lynyrd Skynyrd, the genre began to fade in popularity in the late 1970s, but was sustained the 1980s with acts like .38 Special, Molly Hatchet and the Marshall Tucker Band.[96]

Glam rock emerged from the English psychedelic and art rock scenes of the late 1960s and can be seen as both an extension of and reaction against those trends.[138] Musically diverse, varying between the simple rock and roll revivalism of figures like Alvin Stardust to the complex art rock of Roxy Music, and can be seen as much as a fashion as a musical subgenre.[138] Visually it was a mesh of various styles, ranging from 1930s Hollywood glamor, through 1950s pin-up sex appeal, pre-war Cabaret theatrics, Victorian literary and symbolist styles, science fiction, to ancient and occult mysticism and mythology; manifesting itself in outrageous clothes, makeup, hairstyles, and platform-soled boots.[139] Glam is most noted for its sexual and gender ambiguity and representations of androgyny, beside extensive use of theatrics.[140] It was prefigured by the showmanship and gender-identity manipulation of American acts such as the Cockettes and Alice Cooper.[141]

The origins of glam rock are associated with Marc Bolan, who had renamed his folk duo to T. Rex and taken up electric instruments by the end of the 1960s. Often cited as the moment of inception is his appearance on the UK TV programme Top of the Pops in December 1970 wearing glitter, to perform what would be his first number 1 single "Ride a White Swan".[142] From 1971, already a minor star, David Bowie developed his Ziggy Stardust persona, incorporating elements of professional make up, mime and performance into his act.[143] These performers were soon followed in the style by acts including Roxy Music, Sweet, Slade, Mott the Hoople, Mud and Alvin Stardust.[143] While highly successful in the single charts in the UK, very few of these musicians were able to make a serious impact in the United States; Bowie was the major exception becoming an international superstar and prompting the adoption of glam styles among acts like Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, New York Dolls and Jobriath, often known as "glitter rock" and with a darker lyrical content than their British counterparts.[144] In the UK the term glitter rock was most often used to refer to the extreme version of glam pursued by Gary Glitter and his support musicians the Glitter Band, who between them achieved eighteen top ten singles in the UK between 1972 and 1976.[145] A second wave of glam rock acts, including Suzi Quatro, Roy Wood's Wizzard and Sparks, dominated the British single charts from about 1974 to 1976.[143] Existing acts, some not usually considered central to the genre, also adopted glam styles, including Rod Stewart, Elton John, Queen and, for a time, even the Rolling Stones.[143] It was also a direct influence on acts that rose to prominence later, including Kiss and Adam Ant, and less directly on the formation of gothic rock and glam metal as well as on punk rock, which helped end the fashion for glam from about 1976.[144] Glam has since enjoyed sporadic modest revivals through bands such as Chainsaw Kittens, the Darkness[146] and in R n' B crossover act Prince.[147]

From the late 1960s it became common to divide mainstream rock music into soft and hard rock. Soft rock was often derived from folk rock, using acoustic instruments and putting more emphasis on melody and harmonies.[149] Major artists included Carole King, Cat Stevens and James Taylor.[149] It reached its commercial peak in the mid- to late 1970s with acts like Billy Joel, America and the reformed Fleetwood Mac, whose Rumours (1977) was the best-selling album of the decade.[150] In contrast, hard rock was more often derived from blues-rock and was played louder and with more intensity.[151] It often emphasised the electric guitar, both as a rhythm instrument using simple repetitive riffs and as a solo lead instrument, and was more likely to be used with distortion and other effects.[151] Key acts included British Invasion bands like the Kinks, as well as psychedelic era performers like Cream, Jimi Hendrix and the Jeff Beck Group.[151] Hard rock-influenced bands that enjoyed international success in the later 1970s included Queen,[152]Thin Lizzy,[153]Aerosmith, AC/DC,[151] and Van Halen.

From the late 1960s the term "heavy metal" began to be used to describe some hard rock played with even more volume and intensity, first as an adjective and by the early 1970s as a noun.[154] The term was first used in music in Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" (1967) and began to be associated with pioneer bands like San Francisco's Blue Cheer, Cleveland's James Gang and Michigan's Grand Funk Railroad.[155] By 1970 three key British bands had developed the characteristic sounds and styles which would help shape the subgenre. Led Zeppelin added elements of fantasy to their riff laden blues-rock, Deep Purple brought in symphonic and medieval interests from their progressive rock phase and Black Sabbath introduced facets of the gothic and modal harmony, helping to produce a "darker" sound.[156] These elements were taken up by a "second generation" of heavy metal bands into the late 1970s, including: Judas Priest, UFO, Motörhead and Rainbow from Britain; Kiss, Ted Nugent, and Blue Öyster Cult from the US; Rush from Canada and Scorpions from Germany, all marking the expansion in popularity of the subgenre.[156] Despite a lack of airplay and very little presence on the singles charts, late-1970s heavy metal built a considerable following, particularly among adolescent working-class males in North America and Europe.[157]

Rock, mostly the heavy metal genre, has been criticized by some Christian leaders, who have condemned it as immoral, anti-Christian and even demonic.[158] However, Christian rock began to develop in the late 1960s, particularly out of the Jesus movement beginning in Southern California, and emerged as a subgenre in the 1970s with artists like Larry Norman, usually seen as the first major "star" of Christian rock.[159] The genre has been particularly popular in the United States.[160] Many Christian rock performers have ties to the contemporary Christian music scene, while other bands and artists are closely linked to independent music. Since the 1980s Christian rock performers have gained mainstream success, including figures such as the American gospel-to-pop crossover artist Amy Grant and the British singer Cliff Richard.[161] While these artists were largely acceptable in Christian communities the adoption of heavy rock and glam metal styles by bands like Petra and Stryper, who achieved considerable mainstream success in the 1980s, was more controversial.[162][163] From the 1990s there were increasing numbers of acts who attempted to avoid the Christian band label, preferring to be seen as groups who were also Christians, including P.O.D and Collective Soul.[164]

Punk rock was developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States and the United Kingdom. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock.[165] They created fast, hard-edged music, typically with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics. Punk embraces a DIY (do it yourself) ethic, with many bands self-producing their recordings and distributing them through informal channels.[166]

By late 1976, acts such as the Ramones and Patti Smith, in New York City, and the Sex Pistols and the Clash, in London, were recognized as the vanguard of a new musical movement.[165] The following year saw punk rock spreading around the world. Punk quickly, though briefly, became a major cultural phenomenon in the United Kingdom. For the most part, punk took root in local scenes that tended to reject association with the mainstream. An associated punk subculture emerged, expressing youthful rebellion and characterized by distinctive clothing styles and a variety of anti-authoritarian ideologies.[167]

Although punk rock was a significant social and musical phenomenon, it achieved less in the way of record sales (being distributed by small specialty labels such as Stiff Records),[170] or American radio airplay (as the radio scene continued to be dominated by mainstream formats such as disco and album-oriented rock).[171] Punk rock had attracted devotees from the art and collegiate world and soon bands sporting a more literate, arty approach, such as Talking Heads and Devo began to infiltrate the punk scene; in some quarters the description "new wave" began to be used to differentiate these less overtly punk bands.[172] Record executives, who had been mostly mystified by the punk movement, recognized the potential of the more accessible new wave acts and began aggressively signing and marketing any band that could claim a remote connection to punk or new wave.[173] Many of these bands, such as the Cars and the Go-Go's can be seen as pop bands marketed as new wave;[174] other existing acts, including the Police, the Pretenders and Elvis Costello, used the new wave movement as the springboard for relatively long and critically successful careers,[175] while "skinny tie" bands exemplified by the Knack,[176] or the photogenic Blondie, began as punk acts and moved into more commercial territory.[177]

The second generation of British post-punk bands that broke through in the early 1980s, including the Fall, the Pop Group, the Mekons, Echo and the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes, tended to move away from dark sonic landscapes.[182] Arguably the most successful band to emerge from post-punk was Ireland's U2, who incorporated elements of religious imagery together with political commentary into their often anthemic music, and by the late 1980s had become one of the biggest bands in the world.[186] Although many post-punk bands continued to record and perform, it declined as a movement in the mid-1980s as acts disbanded or moved off to explore other musical areas, but it has continued to influence the development of rock music and has been seen as a major element in the creation of the alternative rock movement.[187]

American working-class oriented heartland rock, characterized by a straightforward musical style, and a concern with the lives of ordinary, blue-collar American people, developed in the second half of the 1970s. The term heartland rock was first used to describe Midwesternarena rock groups like Kansas, REO Speedwagon and Styx, but which came to be associated with a more socially concerned form of roots rock more directly influenced by folk, country and rock and roll.[188] It has been seen as an American Midwest and Rust Belt counterpart to West Coast country rock and the Southern rock of the American South.[189] Led by figures who had initially been identified with punk and New Wave, it was most strongly influenced by acts such as Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Van Morrison, and the basic rock of 1960s garage and the Rolling Stones.[190]

Heartland rock faded away as a recognized genre by the early 1990s, as rock music in general, and blue collar and white working class themes in particular, lost influence with younger audiences, and as heartland's artists turned to more personal works.[190] Many heartland rock artists continue to record today with critical and commercial success, most notably Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and John Mellencamp, although their works have become more personal and experimental and no longer fit easily into a single genre. Newer artists whose music would perhaps have been labelled heartland rock had it been released in the 1970s or 1980s, such as Missouri's Bottle Rockets and Illinois' Uncle Tupelo, often find themselves labeled alt-country.[194]

The term alternative rock was coined in the early 1980s to describe rock artists who did not fit into the mainstream genres of the time. Bands dubbed "alternative" had no unified style, but were all seen as distinct from mainstream music. Alternative bands were linked by their collective debt to punk rock, through hardcore, New Wave or the post-punk movements.[195] Important alternative rock bands of the 1980s in the US included R.E.M., Hüsker Dü, Jane's Addiction, Sonic Youth, and the Pixies,[195] and in the UK the Cure, New Order, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and the Smiths.[196] Artists were largely confined to independent record labels, building an extensive underground music scene based on college radio, fanzines, touring, and word-of-mouth.[197] They rejected the dominant synth-pop of the early 1980s, marking a return to group-based guitar rock.[198][199][200]

Few of these early bands achieved mainstream success, although exceptions to this rule include R.E.M., the Smiths, and the Cure. Despite a general lack of spectacular album sales, the original alternative rock bands exerted a considerable influence on the generation of musicians who came of age in the 1980s and ended up breaking through to mainstream success in the 1990s. Styles of alternative rock in the U.S. during the 1980s included jangle pop, associated with the early recordings of R.E.M., which incorporated the ringing guitars of mid-1960s pop and rock, and college rock, used to describe alternative bands that began in the college circuit and college radio, including acts such as 10,000 Maniacs and the Feelies.[195] In the UK Gothic rock was dominant in the early 1980s, but by the end of the decade indie or dream pop[201] like Primal Scream, Bogshed, Half Man Half Biscuit and the Wedding Present, and what were dubbed shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Lush, Chapterhouse, and the Boo Radleys.[202] Particularly vibrant was the Madchester scene, produced such bands as Happy Mondays, the Inspiral Carpets, and Stone Roses.[196][203] The next decade would see the success of grunge in the United States and Britpop in the United Kingdom, bringing alternative rock into the mainstream.

Disaffected by commercialized and highly produced pop and rock in the mid-1980s, bands in Washington state (particularly in the Seattle area) formed a new style of rock which sharply contrasted with the mainstream music of the time.[204] The developing genre came to be known as "grunge", a term descriptive of the dirty sound of the music and the unkempt appearance of most musicians, who actively rebelled against the over-groomed images of other artists.[204] Grunge fused elements of hardcore punk and heavy metal into a single sound, and made heavy use of guitar distortion, fuzz and feedback.[204] The lyrics were typically apathetic and angst-filled, and often concerned themes such as social alienation and entrapment, although it was also known for its dark humor and parodies of commercial rock.[204]

Bands such as Green River, Soundgarden, Melvins and Skin Yard pioneered the genre, with Mudhoney becoming the most successful by the end of the decade. Grunge remained largely a local phenomenon until 1991, when Nirvana's album Nevermind became a huge success, containing the anthemic song "Smells Like Teen Spirit".[205]Nevermind was more melodic than its predecessors, by signing to Geffen Records the band was one of the first to employ traditional corporate promotion and marketing mechanisms such as an MTV video, in store displays and the use of radio "consultants" who promoted airplay at major mainstream rock stations. During 1991 and 1992, other grunge albums such as Pearl Jam's Ten, Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger and Alice in Chains' Dirt, along with the Temple of the Dog album featuring members of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, became among the 100 top-selling albums.[206] Major record labels signed most of the remaining grunge bands in Seattle, while a second influx of acts moved to the city in the hope of success.[207] However, with the death of Kurt Cobain and the subsequent break-up of Nirvana in 1994, touring problems for Pearl Jam and the departure of Alice in Chains' lead singer Layne Staley in 1998, the genre began to decline, partly to be overshadowed by Britpop and more commercial sounding post-grunge.[208]

Britpop emerged from the British alternative rock scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands particularly influenced by British guitar music of the 1960s and 1970s.[196]The Smiths were a major influence, as were bands of the Madchester scene, which had dissolved in the early 1990s.[78] The movement has been seen partly as a reaction against various U.S.-based, musical and cultural trends in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly the grunge phenomenon and as a reassertion of a British rock identity.[196] Britpop was varied in style, but often used catchy tunes and hooks, beside lyrics with particularly British concerns and the adoption of the iconography of the 1960s British Invasion, including the symbols of British identity previously utilised by the mods.[209] It was launched around 1992 with releases by groups such as Suede and Blur, who were soon joined by others including Oasis, Pulp, Supergrass and Elastica, who produced a series of top ten albums and singles.[196] For a while the contest between Blur and Oasis was built by the popular press into "The Battle of Britpop", initially won by Blur, but with Oasis achieving greater long-term and international success, directly influencing a third generation of Britpop bands, including The Boo Radleys, Ocean Colour Scene and Cast.[210] Britpop groups brought British alternative rock into the mainstream and formed the backbone of a larger British cultural movement known as Cool Britannia.[211] Although its more popular bands, particularly Blur and Oasis, were able to spread their commercial success overseas, especially to the United States, the movement had largely fallen apart by the end of the decade.[196]

The term post-grunge was coined for the generation of bands that followed the emergence into the mainstream and subsequent hiatus of the Seattle grunge bands. Post-grunge bands emulated their attitudes and music, but with a more radio-friendly commercially oriented sound.[208] Often they worked through the major labels and came to incorporate diverse influences from jangle pop, pop-punk, alternative metal or hard rock.[208] The term post-grunge originally was meant to be pejorative, suggesting that they were simply musically derivative, or a cynical response to an "authentic" rock movement.[212] Originally, grunge bands that emerged when grunge was mainstream and were suspected of emulating the grunge sound were pejoratively labelled as post-grunge.[212] From 1994, former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl's new band, the Foo Fighters, helped popularize the genre and define its parameters.[213]

Some post-grunge bands, like Candlebox, were from Seattle, but the subgenre was marked by a broadening of the geographical base of grunge, with bands like Los Angeles' Audioslave, and Georgia's Collective Soul and beyond the US to Australia's Silverchair and Britain's Bush, who all cemented post-grunge as one of the most commercially viable subgenres of the late 1990s.[195][208] Although male bands predominated post-grunge, female solo artist Alanis Morissette's 1995 album Jagged Little Pill, labelled as post-grunge, also became a multi-platinum hit.[214] Post-grunge morphed during the late 1990s as post-grunge bands like Creed and Nickelback emerged.[212] Bands like Creed and Nickelback took post-grunge into the 21st century with considerable commercial success, abandoning most of the angst and anger of the original movement for more conventional anthems, narratives and romantic songs, and were followed in this vein by newer acts including Shinedown, Seether, 3 Doors Down and Puddle of Mudd.[212]

The origins of 1990s pop punk can be seen in the more song-oriented bands of the 1970s punk movement like the Buzzcocks and the Clash, commercially successful new wave acts such as the Jam and the Undertones, and the more hardcore-influenced elements of alternative rock in the 1980s.[215] Pop-punk tends to use power-pop melodies and chord changes with speedy punk tempos and loud guitars.[216] Punk music provided the inspiration for some California-based bands on independent labels in the early 1990s, including Rancid, Pennywise, Weezer and Green Day.[215] In 1994 Green Day moved to a major label and produced the album Dookie, which found a new, largely teenage, audience and proved a surprise diamond-selling success, leading to a series of hit singles, including two number ones in the US.[195] They were soon followed by the eponymous début from Weezer, which spawned three top ten singles in the US.[217] This success opened the door for the multi-platinum sales of metallic punk band the Offspring with Smash (1994).[195] This first wave of pop punk reached its commercial peak with Green Day's Nimrod (1997) and The Offspring's Americana (1998).[218]

In the 1980s the terms indie rock and alternative rock were used interchangeably.[219] By the mid-1990s, as elements of the movement began to attract mainstream interest, particularly grunge and then Britpop, post-grunge and pop-punk, the term alternative began to lose its meaning.[219] Those bands following the less commercial contours of the scene were increasingly referred to by the label indie.[219] They characteristically attempted to retain control of their careers by releasing albums on their own or small independent labels, while relying on touring, word-of-mouth, and airplay on independent or college radio stations for promotion.[219] Linked by an ethos more than a musical approach, the indie rock movement encompassed a wide range of styles, from hard-edged, grunge-influenced bands like the Cranberries and Superchunk, through do-it-yourself experimental bands like Pavement, to punk-folk singers such as Ani DiFranco.[195][196] It has been noted that indie rock has a relatively high proportion of female artists compared with preceding rock genres, a tendency exemplified by the development of feminist-informed Riot Grrrl music.[220] Many countries have developed an extensive local indie scene, flourishing with bands with enough popularity to survive inside the respective country, but virtually unknown outside them.[221]

From about 1997, as dissatisfaction grew with the concept of Cool Britannia, and Britpop as a movement began to dissolve, emerging bands began to avoid the Britpop label while still producing music derived from it.[243][244] Many of these bands tended to mix elements of British traditional rock (or British trad rock),[245] particularly the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Small Faces,[246] with American influences, including post-grunge.[247][248] Drawn from across the United Kingdom (with several important bands emerging from the north of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), the themes of their music tended to be less parochially centered on British, English and London life and more introspective than had been the case with Britpop at its height.[249][250] This, beside a greater willingness to engage with the American press and fans, may have helped some of them in achieving international success.[251]

Post-hardcore developed in the US, particularly in the Chicago and Washington, DC areas, in the early to mid-1980s, with bands that were inspired by the do-it-yourself ethics and guitar-heavy music of hardcore punk, but influenced by post-punk, adopting longer song formats, more complex musical structures and sometimes more melodic vocal styles.[257]

Emo also emerged from the hardcore scene in 1980s Washington, D.C., initially as "emocore", used as a term to describe bands who favored expressive vocals over the more common abrasive, barking style.[258] The early emo scene operated as an underground, with short-lived bands releasing small-run vinyl records on tiny independent labels.[258] Emo broke into mainstream culture in the early 2000s with the platinum-selling success of Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American (2001) and Dashboard Confessional's The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most (2003).[259] The new emo had a much more mainstream sound than in the 1990s and a far greater appeal amongst adolescents than its earlier incarnations.[259] At the same time, use of the term emo expanded beyond the musical genre, becoming associated with fashion, a hairstyle and any music that expressed emotion.[260] By 2003 post-hardcore bands had also caught the attention of major labels and began to enjoy mainstream success in the album charts.[citation needed] A number of these bands were seen as a more aggressive offshoot of emo and given the often vague label of screamo.[261]

In the early 2000s, a new group of bands that played a stripped down and back-to-basics version of guitar rock, emerged into the mainstream. They were variously characterised as part of a garage rock, post-punk or new wave revival.[262][263][264][265] Because the bands came from across the globe, cited diverse influences (from traditional blues, through New Wave to grunge), and adopted differing styles of dress, their unity as a genre has been disputed.[266] There had been attempts to revive garage rock and elements of punk in the 1980s and 1990s and by 2000 scenes had grown up in several countries.[267]

In the 2000s, as computer technology became more accessible and music software advanced, it became possible to create high quality music using little more than a single laptop computer.[274] This resulted in a massive increase in the amount of home-produced electronic music available to the general public via the expanding internet,[275] and new forms of performance such as laptronica[274] and live coding.[276] These techniques also began to be used by existing bands and by developing genres that mixed rock with digital techniques and sounds, including indie electronic, electroclash, dance-punk and new rave.[citation needed]

When an international rock culture developed, it supplanted cinema as the major sources of fashion influence.[280] Paradoxically, followers of rock music have often mistrusted the world of fashion, which has been seen as elevating image above substance.[280] Rock fashions have been seen as combining elements of different cultures and periods, as well as expressing divergent views on sexuality and gender, and rock music in general has been noted and criticised for facilitating greater sexual freedom.[280][281] Rock has also been associated with various forms of drug use, including the amphetamines taken by mods in the early to mid-1960s, through the LSD, mescaline, hashish and other hallucinogenic drugs linked with psychedelic rock in the late 1960s and early 1970s; and sometimes to cannabis, cocaine and heroin, all of which have been eulogised in song.[282][283]

Rock has been credited with changing attitudes to race by opening up African-American culture to white audiences; but at the same time, rock has been accused of appropriating and exploiting that culture.[284][285] While rock music has absorbed many influences and introduced Western audiences to different musical traditions,[286] the global spread of rock music has been interpreted as a form of cultural imperialism.[287] Rock music inherited the folk tradition of protest song, making political statements on subjects such as war, religion, poverty, civil rights, justice and the environment.[288] Political activism reached a mainstream peak with the "Do They Know It's Christmas?" single (1984) and Live Aid concert for Ethiopia in 1985, which, while successfully raising awareness of world poverty and funds for aid, have also been criticised (along with similar events), for providing a stage for self-aggrandisement and increased profits for the rock stars involved.[289]

Since its early development rock music has been associated with rebellion against social and political norms, most obviously in early rock and roll's rejection of an adult-dominated culture, the counterculture's rejection of consumerism and conformity and punk's rejection of all forms of social convention,[290] however, it can also be seen as providing a means of commercial exploitation of such ideas and of diverting youth away from political action.[291]

Suzi Quatro is a singer, bassist and bandleader. When she launched her career in 1973, she was one of the few prominent women instrumentalists and bandleaders.

Professional women instrumentalists are uncommon in rock genres such as heavy metal. According to Schaap and Berkers, "playing in a band is largely a male homosocial activity, that is, learning to play in a band is largely a peer-based ... experience, shaped by existing sex-segregated friendship networks.[292] They note that rock music "is often defined as a form of male rebellion vis-à-vis female bedroom culture".[293] In popular music, there has been a gendered "distinction between public (male) and private (female) participation" in music.[293] "several scholars have argued that men exclude women from bands or from the bands' rehearsals, recordings, performances, and other social activities".[294] "Women are mainly regarded as passive and private consumers of allegedly slick, prefabricated – hence, inferior – pop music..., excluding them from participating as high status rock musicians".[294] One of the reasons that there are rarely mixed gender bands is that "bands operate as tight-knit units in which homosocial solidarity – social bonds between people of the same sex... – plays a crucial role".[294] In the 1960s rock music scene, "singing was sometimes an acceptable pastime for a girl, but playing an instrument ... simply wasn't done".[295]

"The rebellion of rock music was largely a male rebellion; the women – often, in the 1950s and '60s, girls in their teens – in rock usually sang songs as personæ utterly dependent on their macho boyfriends...". Philip Auslander says that "Although there were many women in rock by the late 1960s, most performed only as singers, a traditionally feminine position in popular music". Though some women played instruments in American all-female garage rock bands, none of these bands achieved more than regional success. So they "did not provide viable templates for women's on-going participation in rock".[296] In relation to the gender composition of heavy metal bands, it has been said that "[h]eavy metal performers are almost exclusively male"[297] "...at least until the mid-1980s"[298] apart from "...exceptions such as Girlschool".[297] However, "...now [in the 2010s] maybe more than ever–strong metal women have put up their dukes and got down to it",[299] "carv[ing] out a considerable place for [them]selves."[300] When Suzi Quatro emerged in 1973, "no other prominent female musician worked in rock simultaneously as a singer, instrumentalist, songwriter, and bandleader".[296] According to Auslander, she was "kicking down the male door in rock and roll and proving that a female musician ... and this is a point I am extremely concerned about ... could play as well if not better than the boys".[296]

An all-female band is a musical group in genres such as rock and blues which is exclusively composed of female musicians. This is distinct from a girl group, in which the female members are solely vocalists, though this terminology is not universally followed.[301]

^The terms "pop-rock" and "power pop" have been used to describe more commercially successful music that uses elements from, or the form of, rock music.[48] Pop-rock has been defined as an "upbeat variety of rock music represented by artists such as Elton John, Paul McCartney, the Everly Brothers, Rod Stewart, Chicago, and Peter Frampton."[49] The term power pop was coined by Pete Townshend of the Who in 1966, but not much used until it was applied to bands like Badfinger in the 1970s, who proved some of the most commercially successful of the period.[50]

^All of these elements, including the close harmonies of doo wop and girl groups, the carefully crafted song-writing of the Brill Building Sound and the polished production values of soul, have been seen as influencing the Merseybeat sound, particularly the early work of The Beatles, and through them the form of later rock music.[61]

^Only the Beach Boys were able to sustain a creative career into the mid-1960s, producing a string of hit singles and albums, including the highly regarded Pet Sounds in 1966, which made them, arguably, the only American rock or pop act that could rival The Beatles.[64]

^In Detroit, garage rock's legacy remained alive into the early 1970s, with bands such as the MC5 and the Stooges, who employed a much more aggressive approach to the form. These bands began to be labelled punk rock and are now often seen as proto-punk or proto-hard rock.[90]

^R. Stakes, "Those boys: the rise of Mersey beat", in S. Wade, ed., Gladsongs and Gatherings: Poetry and its Social Context in Liverpool Since the 1960s (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001), ISBN0-85323-727-1, pp. 157–66.